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Notch Releases New Footage of 0x10c

Some new footage of Minecraft mogul Notch's next ambitious project, the unpronounceably-titled 0x10c, has been released to the world, and by the looks of it, the programming-based FPS is taking some visual cues from System Shock 2 -- though if a recent interview is anything to go by, Notch has some significantly crazier ideas in store.

Speaking with PC Gamer, Notch describes aiming for something a bit like Firefly.

"The goal is to have it feel a bit like Firefly," says Notch. "You can try to land on a planet but you mess up and, instead of having the ship just explode like it would in real life, the landing gear gets broken. Then you have to try to fix that by finding resources. Instead of the adventure being flying from here to here, it's: I set the destination, oh god I hit a small asteroid and the cloaking device broke."

Notch also describes wanting to recapture the early days of programming, when a single coder was able to do everything. Each ship in-game comes with its own 16-bit computer, which players will be able to modify with their own code.

Minecraft never really sucked me in the way it did my friends and family; I felt as if it was almost too open, and the blank-slate world left me feeling more directionless than anything. In any case, I'm seeing promising things ahead for 0x10c. For one thing, it's set in an alternate universe where the space race never ended, and that sounds like a strong basis for some really interesting emergent storytelling to unfurl. But will us non-coders be able to forge our way through 0x10c's world too?